ante

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. Games The stake that each poker player must put into the pool before receiving a hand or before receiving new cards. See Synonyms at bet.

n. A price to be paid, especially as one's share; cost: "Whether they could actually turn back Soviet policy depended on many factors that Moscow might yet choose to test by upping the ante” ( Foreign Affairs).

transitive v. Games To put (one's stake) into the pool in poker.

transitive v. To pay: Let's ante up the bill.

intransitive v. Games To put one's stake into the pool in poker: Don't look at your cards until everyone has anted.

intransitive v. To pay up.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A price or cost, as in up the ante.

n. In poker and other games, the contribution made by all players to the pot before dealing the cards.

v. To pay the ante in poker. Often used ante up.

v. To make an investment in money, effort, or time before knowing one's chances.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. Each player's stake, which is put into the pool before (ante) the game begins.

v. To put up (an ante).

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

In the game of poker, to deposit stakes in the pool or common receptacle for them: commonly used in the phrase to ante up.

In heraldry, ingrafted: said of one color or metal broken into another by means of dovetailed, nebulé, embattled, or ragulé edges. Also enté.

A prefix of Latin origin, originally only in compounds or derivatives taken from the Latin or formed from Latin elements, as in antecessor, antepenultimate, antemeridian, etc., but now a familiar English formative, meaning before, either in place or in time.

n. In the game of poker, the stake or bet deposited in the pool by each player before drawing new cards; also, the receptacle for the stakes.

Examples

To say that soldiers have "nothing to complain about ex ante" is to assert that they have already been paid everything they are owed, as though the military service can be reduced to a purely economic transaction.